Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday 8 November 2015

Bl. John Duns Scotus


November 8th is the commemoration of Bl. John Duns Scotus OFM, who died in 1308. John Dillon posted on the Medieval Religion discussion group one of his selections of early images of him, and given the Oxford link and the recent excavations of more of the site of the medieval Greyfriars here it seems very apposite to share, and also adapt slightly, his post:


Born at Duns in Scotland andordained priest at Northampton in 1291 and trained at Oxford, he lectured at Paris ( " who fired Paris for Mary without spot" - Hopkins ) and, from 1307, at Köln. His cult was confirmed in 1993 at the level of Beatus. The Subtle Doctor now reposes in a modern sarcophagus in Köln's thirteenth-century Minoritenkirche Mariae Empfängnis (Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception), formerly a church for foreign teachers and students. His entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy can be seen here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus/

Some period-pertinent images of Bl. John Duns Scotus:

a) as depicted on the opening pages of text of each volume of a two-volume thirteenth- or fourteenth-century copy, from Genoa, of his commentaries on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard (Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, mss. 882, 883):
1) ms. 882, fol. 5r: http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht17/IRHT_11877-p.jpg
2) ms. 883, fol. 1r: http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht17/IRHT_11881-p.jpg

b) as depicted at the outset of an early fourteenth-century copy, of East Anglian origin, of his commentaries on the Sententiae (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 3061, fol. 1r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b525038815/f9.item.zoom

c) as depicted at the outset of of an earlier fourteenth-century copy (c. 1320) of his Quodlibet (Munich, BSB, Clm 8717, fols. 61r-100r, at fol. 61r):
http://faculty.cua.edu/hoffmann/scotus-bibliography.htm

d) as depicted by Benozzo Gozzoli in his mid-fifteenth-century frescoes (between 1450 and 1452) in the chiesa di San Francesco in Montefalco (PG) in Umbria:
http://tinyurl.com/ofe2g99

e) as depicted at the outset of a later fifteenth-century copy (1470s?) of a commentary of his on Book One of the Sententiae (Rovigo, Biblioteca dell'Accademia dei Concordi, Biblioteca Silvestriana cod. 215, fol. 1r):
http://tinyurl.com/pewxzww

f) as depicted by Carlo Crivelli in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (1471?; from his now dismembered Montefiore altarpiece) in the Polo Museale di San Francesco at Montefiore dell'Aso (AP) in the Marche:

 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Carlo_crivelli%2C_montefiore%2C_santo_francescano.jpg


g) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (c. 1476) variously attributed to Joos van Gent (Justus of Ghent, etc., etc.) or to Pedro Berruguete in the Galleria nazionale delle Marche in the ducal palace at Urbino:

 http://paradjanov.biz/works/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/duns-scotus.jpg


On display (lower right) on the east wall of Federico da Montefeltro's studiolo:
http://www.gutenberg-e.org/kirkbride/detail/us_2_east_wall_men.html

h) as depicted by Nardo Rapicano at the outset of a later fifteenth-century copy (c. 1480), of Neapolitan origin, of a commentary of his on Book Two of the Sententiae (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 3063, fol. 1r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8446954p/f11.item.zoom

i) as depicted (left margin at top) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century Weltchronik (Nuremberg Chronicle; 1493) at fol. CCXXIr):
http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/124%20%28Folio%20CCXXIr%29.pdf

j) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Albertus Magnus) by Amico Aspertini in an earlier sixteenth-century panel painting (1521) in the Pinacoteca civica of Como:

 http://cultura.comune.como.it/uploads/images/prestiti/dipinti/P594_A.%20Aspertini,%20Ritratto%20di%20Alberto%20Magno%20e%20Duns%20Scoto.jpg



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